Friday, March 23, 2007

Jillian comes into the kitchen and says "MOM! Ali put chapstick on something!" alrighty then.... guess it's time to figure out what the children have been up to. "Follow Me!" says the daughter who is in the right at this moment. so we wander into my bedroom where I see that there is a certain gleam to the bedside table which we all know has not come from my dusting or waxing of the furniture. scanning the room, one notices a certain lack of the defendent. "Ali! where are you hiding?" I call into the emptiness. and a very very small voice calls back "in the closet"so I head to the hall closet and sure enough on the second shelf up, curled into a tiny ball is my middle child. needless to say, she was not punished, but simply explained the proper use of chapstick (even though her hiding proved she knew right well how to use the chapstick in the first place) but some things are too funny to take seriously.

As I sit typing this, my Suzy is gleaming all over with the sheen of butter as I have decided she doesn't get enough fat in her diet and forgetting the slickery side effects of adding butter to her peas, I went ahead and did it. Now she is shiny from head to toe as 10 months old are wont to be as they eat by rubbing food into their pores vs putting it in their mouths. I am thinking of setting her on the ground and offering the twins a chocolate cookie for whoever can catch her first. aaaah the fodder for therapy when suzy is older.

and since it has been forever since I blogged, I will add one more story and press my luck with my attention elsewhere from my children for an additional moment. Last night we went for a walk around the neighborhood. One of our new favorite pastimes in the warming weather in the new neighborhood. The girls go on their bikes with their training wheels, suzy gets pushed in her comfy stroller and mike walks the dog. it's a nice arrangement, or so we thought. The girls have been pretty good about staying close, even though they are getting braver and going faster on their bikes. Last night however was a new story. We went down a new street which is very short and a culdesac. so we let the girls ride ahead of us as much as they wanted. (since there really was nowhere for them to go). Ali likes to ride fast. Jilli prefers to ride with "the rest of her family". Ali did well. she stopped at the end of the street and we let her ride back to the stop sign and she stopped and waited for us when she got there. she did the same at the next street as we headed toward home. the next street was cavalier and it turns left into Doepke which is our street. we all turned right together and headed off. ali started going a little faster and was soon about a half a block ahead of us. we assumed when she got to the end she would stop and wait. however, we neglected to remember our daughter's thought processes. There is no stop sign when the road turns left, so Ali did not stop. As she turned the corner and kept going, Mike started calling to her. We decided he would run after her and I would stay with Jilli. as mike sprinted off after Ali, Jilli became a little confused as now the "rest of her family" was split up. so she started following Mike. We became quite a long parade. Ali leading the way with Mike about 1/4 block after her and Jilli 1/4 block after him and Suzy and I pulling up the rear another 1/4 block behind Jilli. The thing to remember is that the training wheels on the bikes are Exceptionally Loud. So Ali never heard Mike yelling for her, at one point she did stop and look back only to discover that there was a great race going on and she was in the lead. This compelled her to go even faster much to Mike's aggravation. Needless to say Ali won. she lost her bike for 3 days as her reward (safety reasons required a punishment for this caper, no matter how funny I thought it was - please note that I had not sprinted the last two and 1/2 blocks home.)

well, i promise more Jilli stories next time. Ali's been on a run the last few days, but Jilli does hold her own I promise. Love you all!!